THE Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has modified the Quality of Service (QoS) parameters for international long distance operators by doing away with the distinction between "toll quality" and "below toll quality" services.

According to an official statement, after opening up ILD sector for new operators and permitting them to deploy VOIP technology in the international long distance network, TRAI stipulated QoS benchmarks for these services in November 2002 to protect the interest of consumers. As this technology was not considered to be mature enough at that time, benchmarks were fixed for two classes of service, i.e. "Toll quality" and "Below toll quality", with the condition that below toll quality service should be offered at lower price to the consumers.

"With technology advance, it has now become easier for VOIP-based ILD operators to deliver `Toll quality' service. It is noteworthy that none of the ILD operators, including the incumbent VSNL, is offering the option of `Below toll quality' ILD service to the customers. Therefore, in the revised notification TRAI has modified the QOS benchmarks by specifying only `toll quality' service," the statement notes.

The modified QOS benchmarks merge both the classes of QOS into one and by applying the concept of advantage factor to provide some downward adjustment in QOS benchmarks in case international satellite link is involved in the network.